A Kind of Family
by chaserzachsmith
Summary: After the war, Lavender decides that a family can be whatever she wants it to be.


Lavender meets Nora Finnigan on a chilly November afternoon. She is nineteen, and Seamus has brought her and Dean home with him. He is only recently _doing_ things, and Lavender is trying her hardest to accommodate him.

Lavender feels bad for Nora immediately, because Nora jumps to the conclusion that Lavender and Seamus are dating.

" _No_ , Mam," says Seamus. "You're embarrassing me."

"No?" says Nora, distinctly disappointed. Seamus puts his head in his hands.

"You...have a lovely home," says Lavender.

The boys end up in the living room with Mr. Finnigan watching football. Lavender helps Nora with the dishes.

"I didn't realize Seamus was friends with girls," Nora confesses.

"He wasn't really," says Lavender. "We weren't that close until seventh year."

Nora looks sheepish, but presses on. "I'm glad he's got you, at any rate."

There are a lot of things Lavender could say. Seamus hasn't really got her as much as he likes to think he has, or as much as Nora probably thinks. He's downright miserable to be around a lot of the time and it's harder and harder to deal with.

"I try to help," she lies. It's a minor lie. She used to offer help. He didn't want it. She stopped offering.

"So do I," says Nora. "So do I."

* * *

"Does he talk about it with you?" Lavender says. She is visiting Nora. Supposedly, she has come by for tea and to help weed the garden. Really, she is here to gossip about Seamus.

"The war?" says Nora. "Mercy, no."

Lavender pulls out a thistle, careful not to let it touch her bare arms. "That sounds like him."

"Has he talked to you?" Nora asks.

Lavender makes a face. "Not since it ended. He would barely let me come visit him after I got out of hospital."

"Have you talked to the others?" says Nora. "The other ones from Hogwarts."

"The DA?" says Lavender. "We meet up sometimes. I talk to Parvati and Padma, mostly. And Neville or Ginny sometimes."

Nora hums in acknowledgement.

"Does Seamus's father work?" says Lavender. "Seamus never talked about him much."

"He's not that busy," says Nora. "I think Seamus is just avoiding him."

"Why would he?" says Lavender. She'd rather gotten the sense that Seamus got along well with his parents.

"What isn't Seamus avoiding?" says Nora, her voice twisting a little sadly.

* * *

Lavender felt bad for Seamus, of course. But just like seventh year, he was retreating into a prickly shell rather than deal with anything he didn't want to deal with. He was rude and unpleasant at his worst, and moody and depressed at best.

She had wondered, in seventh year, if having Dean around would have made it easier for Seamus to cope with the world falling apart. She knows that she relied on Parvati all year to keep her sane, and that Parvati relied on her in turn.

But Seamus is living with Dean now, and hasn't seemed to improve. She wonders if he's just been through too much without Dean. Wonders if the collapse of the Ministry and their hellish seventh year had been enough for Seamus to lose all of his vivacity. Seamus in seventh year had been snippy and petty and grumpy, but he'd at least had moments when he made an effort to be a regular, functional person.

Seamus isn't trying anymore. It's the worst thing the war did to any of Lavender's friends. Worse than Parvati's obsessive paranoia, worse than Ginny's bitterness, worse than Padma's sharpness.

Sometimes she tries to reason it out to herself. After all, there has to be a _reason_ that this is Seamus's solution. Maybe he had grown up so carelessly, so unconcerned, that seventh year had broken through everything he is made of, the same way Cedric Diggory's death had. Maybe.

* * *

"He's a good person."

She says it sadly, as though it's something to mourn. Lavender, even though she has doubted a few times that there is more to Seamus than his bravado, can't help but agree.

"He is."

Nora sighs and holds her mug tightly. Either she is unbothered by the warmth or she is ignoring it. All the smallest things have reminded Lavender of Seamus and how he acts. It's odd, really. She wonders if, if she brought Seamus to meet her mother, he'd notice the same things.

She doubts it, but she doesn't know why. Maybe he just isn't observant the way she knows she is.

"I never was a good person," says Nora. "I don't mind saying so."

Lavender is uncomfortable. She is uncomfortable talking about Seamus to his mother when he isn't here to self-deprecate in response. She is uncomfortable with Nora saying that she's a bad person. She's uncomfortable with the way Nora looks at her tea, the same way she's seen Seamus look at his when he is feigning nonchalance.

"I don't think he realises how incredible I think it is," says Nora, "that he isn't selfish."

That's another thing Lavender has doubted over the last few years. It certainly seems selfish to lock yourself up alone and let everyone else worry. It certainly seems selfish to risk your neck every day for no reason and not a care about anyone else's feelings.

But Lavender had watched Seamus cracking jokes with the fifth years and giving piggyback rides to the first years and putting on a smile and a happy demeanor whenever he was around someone who needed it. She had watched him hit walls until his knuckles were bloody when he was worried for someone else. She knows better than to imagine that he's any more selfish than anyone else.

He's far less selfish than she knows she is.

"You aren't a bad person," Lavender tries.

"I don't know where he got any bravery," says Nora. "God knows, not from me."

Lavender can kind of see the courage in Nora. Courage in small ways, maybe, but courage. Courage to leave the comfort of a nice Wizarding society and marry a Muggle. Courage to send her son back to Hogwarts when it's becoming more and more like a prison. Courage to stand by her principles.

She doesn't know how to say that, though, so she puts her hand on Nora's.

* * *

Nora has tickets to see a play in Cork, and so she and Lavender have on nice skirts and peacoats and are shivering outside the theater waiting for the will-call woman.

"I'd hoped Seamus would go with me," says Nora. "But he laughed when I suggested it."

Lavender had rather expected that Seamus would exhibit gayer tastes, now that he was gay. But Seamus was the same Seamus he'd always been. And that included his general disdain for the performing arts or events that required nice skirts and peacoats.

"He's missing out," she says, and they reach the front of the line.

"Finnigan, Nora," says Nora, and they get their tickets and go inside.

Lavender checks her watch; there's ten minutes left.

"How have you been?" says Nora, handing Lavender a caramel candy.

Lavender unwraps it and pops it in her mouth. "I've been good, I think. The Healers are still working on my neck, but it's slow going. I'm trying to date again, but the DA isn't a good dating pool and I don't know if I want to date other people."

"Why's the DA a bad dating pool?" says Nora, and Lavender laughs.

"You don't know the DA," she says. "It's fifty Seamuses, in different phases of healing."

"Sweet hell," says Nora, and laughs.

* * *

Lavender loves her mother, of course. Loves her to death. Her mother is a little bit distant, a little bit stringent, a little bit picky. But her mother is her mother and she loves her.

She supposes that makes Nora the somewhat overbearing but cool kind-of aunt. Which makes her Seamus's kind-of sister, which makes some sense to her. They certainly bicker enough.

Of course, she'd also slept with him in seventh year before they'd worked out that it wasn't going anywhere and it wasn't helping anything. Which puts the brother-sister thing into shaky territory. But it's a metaphor, so whatever.

"It's a little weird, how you hang out with my mam," says Seamus. He scratches the corner of his eye.

"She's lovely," says Lavender.

Seamus tilts his head but can't find anything to take offense to. He grunts in agreement, and Dean snorts.

Seamus flicks Dean on the knee. "Still a little weird. I don't chum around with your mam."

"My mum isn't really a chummy person," says Lavender, which is true.

"What do you talk about?" says Seamus. "Like, what do you even have in common?"

"We like the same books," says Lavender. "We don't talk about you nearly as much as you probably think we do."

Seamus frowns, but can't find a counterargument to that, either. "Don't go telling her anything about me that I wouldn't tell her," he says.

"I'm not stupid," says Lavender. She hopes he takes that as _of course I would never tell her we slept together._

He gives her a shifty look, which she takes as _you better not._

She rolls her eyes at him.

"You're both crazy," observes Dean, and Seamus elbows him in the side.

* * *

"Do you want kids?" says Seamus.

"I don't know," says Lavender. She is visiting, and Dean and Seamus are babysitting Teddy Lupin. Or, really, Dean is babysitting Teddy Lupin and she and Seamus are at the kitchen table watching.

Mrs. Tonks and the Potters and Weasleys are all at the same Ministry gala in commemoration of the Battle. The DA has largely stopped going to those, opting instead to rent out the Leaky Cauldron and get drunk.

Dean is trying without much success to interest Teddy in a plush lion. Teddy puts a crayon in his mouth and Dean Summons it back quickly.

"I get the sense my mam wants grandkids," says Seamus.

"Probably," says Lavender. Nora definitely wanted grandkids. She'd mentioned it a few times.

"Do you think Dean wants kids?" says Seamus. They watch as Dean stealthily grabs the rest of the crayons and puts them on the TV stand.

"You know Dean better than I do," says Lavender.

"What if he does?" says Seamus.

Lavender doesn't know.

* * *

"He worries me," says Nora, watching Seamus and his father talking quietly in the hallway.

Lavender is only here to drop off presents and some cranberries; she hasn't even taken off her coat. She nods. She doesn't know what exactly is worrying Nora- it could really be anything.

Seamus shrugs with his whole body and leans against the wall. "He looks fine to me," says Lavender.

"He said yesterday that he's got all the family he ever needs," says Nora.

"I think he has," says Lavender honestly. She can't imagine Seamus as a parent yet- he is too young, too unsure of his place.

He had time. And in any case, he'd gone to the last DA meetup and actually talked to people, actually tried to make connections. Dennis Creevey and the Patils and Neville and Ginny and Hannah. It was a start, she thought. A good start.

And the DA are kind of a family, right?

She bumps Nora with her shoulder. "He's happy, Nora."

Nora nods. "I think he is."

* * *

AN: Nora Finnigan is stolen from my lovely friend Emily (oh help) who is linked in my profile. I highly recommend her fics "The Time of Little Things" and "In Days of Peace," which focus on Nora and her relationship with Seamus.


End file.
